Tag Archives: interior

House by John Lewisという新しい家庭用品・家具ブランドの販促のために、大手デパートチェーンのジョン・ルイスが10月18日、イズリントンのN1 shopping centreに「Open House by John Lewis」というpop up shop（期間限定ショップ）をオープンさせた。

House by John Lewisは、最新のデザイン製品を手頃な価格で提供する、新しい自社ブランド。IKEAやHabitatと同じコンセプトで、見た目も似ている。IKEAは郊外に店舗があるから客の奪い合いにはならないかもしれないけれど、繁華街に店舗を持ち、既に経営危機にあるHabitatにとっては、強力なライバル出現だ。以前、色々お世話になったHabitatには同情するが、弱肉強食の社会、力と金があるものが勝つのが世の習いだから仕方ない。

On October 18th, Department store chain John Lewis opened a temporary pop up shop, ‘Open House by John Lewis’, in Islington’s N1 shopping centre, to promote its House by John Lewis homewares and furniture range.

House by John Lewis is a range of modern but affordable products for a contemporary home. Look exactly like IKEA or Habitat. IKEA shops in suburbia don’t have to go on a turf war with John Lewis, but already troubled Habitat stores on high street must see it as a new powerful competitor. As once a fun, I feel very sorry for Habitat, but this is life.

Open House, as well as a coffee and juice bar in the shop, is open from 10am every day until November 10. The shop also hosts free events regularly, such as Tuesday night film screening, a street food workshop, and Open House Party every Friday with free drinks. On Sundays shoppers can enjoy board games and Bloody Marys. How generous they are!

地下の映画上映用スペース。デッキチェアはあまり座り心地が良くなさそうだが、まあ無料だし文句は言えないか。

Film screening space downstairs. The deck chairs look a bit uncomfortable but it is free at the end and can’t demand too much.

The owner of six food & drink venues in London including the Folly and the Refinery, Drake & Morgan group opened another venue near St Paul Cathedral, the Happenstance bar & restaurant. You can see similarities with its sister venues, such as generous amount of space with high ceiling and stylish interiors with industrial feel. The names are different, but it is sort of a chain.

The Happenstance encompasses also deli, mixology table and florist as well as bar and food area, and opens all-day 7 days a week, serving “seasonal & locally sourced” cuisine, from breakfast, brunch & lunch, dinner & late night bites. Their closing hour (Mon-Sat) is vague, just writing “to late” on its web, so be careful when you head for there at 2am at Monday night.

The Happenstance is surely an useful venue, with its convenient location, (slightly) above average food, acceptable pricing, and the big space where you have high probability to get a table without fail, but I don’t feel ‘soul’ or ‘passion’, and I know I shouldn’t expect such things from the venue like this.

This sleek coffee shop chain, Harris + Hoole, is created by Australian brothers and a sister after their success in Taylor Street Baristas. Founded in 2012, Harris + Hoole now has 14 outlets in London and a few outside, and plans to open an additional 14 in central London before the end of this year (Evening Standard article). However, media and people attack the chain as disguising themselves as “family affair” with independent look (see their website), after it was reported that Tesco owns 49% of its share. After its first outlet of Harris + Hoole is introduced at the Tesco Metro near London Bridge station this March, Tesco is planning to open more inside of their stores.

In general, British media like to insist that they don’t like big corporations and care about small business, and you can find dozens of articles related to the connection between Harris + Hoole and ‘evil’ Tesco. On contrary to the media appraisal of small shops, British high streets are filled with chains, bigger or smaller, and people shop at the chains anyways, because it is more practical and often cheaper. It is like love & hate. Some people call Harris + Hoole as hypocritical, but they use Tesco’s money to achieve their dreams to bring good coffee to many, and people who are fed up with bad coffee from ‘small shop’ nearby would benefit as well. So what’s wrong with that, except the fact that they don’t clearly state that they get some help from Tesco.

The fact that Harris + Hoole is half owned by Tesco doesn’t bother me. The problem is their food (we ordered sandwiches and soups) and their ‘artisan’ coffee, which was just average and not really great. I guess training their employees to keep up the standard is harder than I thought.

Located side by side to the popular Caravan Kings Cross on Granary Square, Grain Store is a new restaurant by French chef Bruno Loubet with his business partners, Michael Benyon and Mark Sainsbury, original backers of established Moro restaurant (Spanish/North African) on Exmouth Market and the owners of the Zetter Hotel & Townhouse in Clerkenwell, after success of Bistrot Bruno Loubet in the Zetter Hotel. Inside of the Grain Store has hip industrial decor and is massive with around 140 seatings, and there are also 80 terrace seatings – perfect for a summer day like now, though you definitely need a sunscreen cream when because there is no roof or screens over your head.

The menu is quite creative, and you need a lot of imagination to guess how the dish looks & tastes like. Although they use meat and fish as well, vegetables are exceeded on its menu – about a third of the list is either vegan or vegetarian. Very healthy, but it may not be the best choice when you are starving. Our creamy truffle risotto (£10.50, photo below) was very good, and small sprouting beans salad (£6.00) tasted like, just sprouting beans, but fresh and healthy (of course). The potato wafer on the top of the salad was delicious, and I could eat only that without sprouting beans!

M is a big pizza fan. He has to take a look, every time he finds a good looking pizzeria. When we were driving through North Gate road, he immediately spotted this “pizzeria & wine shop” Sweet Thursday and stopped his vespa right away. After few days later, we visited Sweet Thursday to try their pizza.

Front is the wine shop and pizzeria space, decorated in funky retro-modern style, on the back. There is a big table for a larger group, facing a nice & quiet small garden. Owners are not Italians but De Beauvoir natives, but the staffs seen in the open kitchen were all Italians, including an experienced-looking middle age pizzaiolo.

They serve Napoli style pizza for eat-in or takeaway, made using the ingredients from Naples with traditional pizza making techniques. You can either choose topping from their menu or create your own. We ordered classic margherita with extra anchovies topping, as we always do (we are very conservative about pizza). It was looking good, and tasted good – chewy dough with mozzarella melting nicely into sweet tomato sauces. It was nice, at least on the first visit. We went there for the second time, the master pizzaiola was nowhere to be seen. And pizza was not as good as the first one… I realize that pizza looks easy to make, but pizzaiolo’s skill is definitely needed for a great pizza. And the same for sushi, just an small addition. So please don’t believe that YO! sushi or Tesco’s sushi is authentic and as good as the counterparts in Japan! Anyway, we have to check if the pizzaiola is there next time we go.

As for wine, they seem to have good selection of wines, and even their house wines are organic from Sicily (1 litre carafe: £16.50 for white / £20 for red). Apart from their menu, you can also have any bottle at their wine shop with a small corkage fee. If you eat at the restaurant, you can have 10% off the price of wine in their shop that day. They also host wine tasting events as well, if you are interested.

I am not sure if it is related to the Euro crisis, recently we have seen more opening of restaurants and cafes with Italian owners in London. This Burro e Salvia (butter and sage in Italian), opened at the beginning of June on Redchurch Street, is one of them.

When you go through the entrance, first you see the deli counter selling handmade pasta and mozzrella cheese etc, and then a small area where female staffs make fresh pasta. There are only two small tables for two and a lager sharing table on the eat-in space on the back. The space is small, but chicly decorated and has a lot of light coming through the skylight. Their pasta are handmade daily, and though choice of weekly changing pasta dishes (served 12-3pm) are only a handful, but delicious and even reasonable which are under £10. They also have all day plates from the deli counter such as prosciutto ham and mozazrella cheese, as well as deserts. A little gem of the area.

After a stroll on Bermondsey Street, we had a little rest at the Garrison. They call themselves a ‘pub’ but it looks more like a restaurant; in the late afternoon, cutlery and wine glasses were set on each table, except rather uncomfortable counter and window side stools.

We don’t normally have coffee at pubs, because they obviously focus on alcohols and espresso is not good in general. But we went to the Garrison because of its funky interior: vintage furniture, antique ceramics, French country style water jugs, and mishmash of bric-a-brac. Our anticipation was right: M’s espresso, “organic & fair trade, roasted in London”, was imperfect to say the least. Thank god I ordered fresh mint tea – teas cannot go wrong. And the staff was rather uninterested in a customer like us, just having a non-alcoholic beverage. I am not sure about their food, but Time Out (Feb 2012) review was not good. After all, they are cool and nothing matters.